Word: chasings
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...This is a city of sometimes incongruous pleasures, an important business center set in what feels like a holiday resort-Frankfurt on the C?te d'Azur. The subtropical climate lures office workers to sun themselves in the early evening on the golden chain of Pacific beaches; million-dollar yachts chase rust-stained dinghies between the cream-and-green ferries on the harbor; ships like concrete office blocks glide under the Harbour Bridge to the container wharves, past tourists beaming over the gunwales of replica 18th century sailing vessels. The twin architectural highlights of Bridge and Opera House flank a modern...
What links this string of fatalities? The answer, it turns out, is Iris Chase Griffen--Laura's elder sister, Richard's wife, Aimee's mother. Now in her 80s, Iris realizes that she is the only person left alive who knows the circumstances behind these deaths. Having been warned by her doctor that her heart is weak, the old woman begins, reluctantly, to write down what she remembers: "After all I've done to avoid it, Iris, her mark, however truncated: initials chalked on the sidewalk, or a pirate's X on the map, revealing the beach where the treasure...
This novel, Iris reveals, was published shortly after her sister's death, and, after an initial furor about its sexual content, gives Laura Chase a posthumous literary fame that endures into the late '90s. "Laura touches people," Iris writes...
...with, well, The Blind Assassin? Iris also remembers the 1934 strike at her father's button factory and a handsome agitator named Alex Thomas whom she and Laura daringly hid for a time in the attic of their house. Is this "real" story the genesis of the Laura Chase novel? And how do we know that Laura wrote...
Those are only two of the questions that Atwood raises and then thrillingly answers. Iris Chase is a brilliant addition to Atwood's roster of fascinating fictional narrators. Not only is her story sinuously complex, but she is entertaining company. Her comments on her story are crotchety and amusing: "The bank has Roman pillars, to remind us to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, such as those ridiculous services charges." She is also frank about her occasional evasions: "I look back over what I've written and I know it's wrong, not because of what...